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#critical role meta
ludinusdaleth · 2 days
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i dont know how to put this one into words properly but something about the way relvin is imogen's actual blood father, but due to liliana (& relvin)'s physical and/or emotional absence, ludinus has taken the actual role of shaping imogen like a father would, as the shadow looming over her. the way imogen is liliana's spitting image but has traded her cowgirls clothes from gelvaan for archmage robes so like ludinus's. she even uses his old staff at times. both bear the burden of leadership from their party even as they insist they're on equal grounds. both seem to believe they need someone to be their tether, as that someone is drowning in their own powers. both, frankly, understand what needs to be sacrificed more than liliana.
liliana wants to come home to her simple life, an untouched relvin & imogen. but imogen is far from the sum of her & relvin's parts. as she marches to war, she has become the sum of her & ludinus's parts. due to her own mother she is not the farmer side of liliana, but her warlord one. and i dont think liliana's mind could bear to take that in.
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deramin2 · 1 month
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Laudna going through a spiral about whether Ashton is a bad person because he wanted the power of both shards and did something stupidly dangerous to do it vs. Laudna deliberately feeding Delilah by using Hunger of the Shadow on Bor'Dor and Willmaster Edmuda.
Absolutely love it. Girl please keep projecting your worst fears about yourself and destructive habits on your friends and get scared of them without ever stepping back and assessing your own actions, it is delicious.
Bonus points that Imogen and Laudna are the biggest enablers of each other and not at all inclined to check each other's negative behaviors. Imogen still has a healthy fear about her powers, though, especially right now.
Meanwhile Laudna is still convinced that Orym is fine and the stable one while no one questions how Orym got Hex or that he's willingly using Ludinus' Quintessence Array to drain Edmuda of her life force. A totally normal stable good guy thing to do. Definitely no nosedive here. Although Laudna is irritated at him for pressuring everyone to keep going and not back down, and that he got the Quintessence Array use and not her. (Because again, she is trying to feed her own need for power.)
Somehow Fearne is the only one who's beginning to think they all might be going too far and getting scared, but they're not really listening to her. She saw her potential to become Dark Fearne and actually reevaluated her life. (Even if she's still a chaos being.)
Bell's Hells are great because they're like NPCs who ended up as the B-Team who keeps happening to be in the right place at the right time to be in the middle of all these events leading to this cataclysmic events that are so much bigger than they are. It's FUN that it's happening faster than they can recon with it and they're getting more and more desperate to not go under in a way that is actually making them go under faster.
They're seeing it in each other but not in themselves. That's the tragedy. They're so desperate to win it doesn't matter at what cost anymore. They're all just competing to see who can sacrifice themselves for the cause first while dragging their enemies down with them. They're going to end up being the monsters someone else has to fight, even though they kept trying to do good and fight the darkness.
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vethbrenatto · 1 year
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time for me to reminisce on caleb widogast. not the man. the name.
how it was just one of a ton of aliases that bren aldric ermendrud used. it didn’t mean anything. if it was any other day he would’ve changed it the next day. but it was the day he met his best friend in a prison cell, so the name stayed.
and then it was the name he had when he met the rest of his friends that would become his family. it became his name because it was the name that the people who cared for him would use.
bren was never a deadname, becoming “caleb” was never any great show of choice. it was just a name that he happened to have on a particular day. the people that loved him made that his name.
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ladyfoxfire · 6 days
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I’m curious how Matt’s going to handle the off-screen assassination attempt on Liliana. Obviously, if one or more of the PCs had gone on that mission, he would have played it out and let the dice decide her fate. But since they didn’t, it’s entirely up to him if it succeeds or not.
On the one hand, Liliana being alive makes for juicy conflict with Imogen, and it’s sad to see that plot line end. On the other hand, Matt likes to give the player’s choices consequences, and Imogen chose not to warn her mother or make more than a token effort to change Rashinna’s mind. That choice loses some of its weight if Liliana survives the attack anyway.
Whichever way it goes, it was a great twist, and I’m excited to see how this plays out.
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wenamedthedogkylo · 9 months
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I already said this in my other post but this really deserves to stand on its own and honestly I'm crying over it so it has to get written down somewhere, but when Bor'Dor took a pull from Ashton's pipe, the smoke turned into an image of him shooting a Fire Bolt at the janky, creepy, lovingly set up dummy that the Hells had made for him. The target that his own targets made out of admiration for him, out of affection, out of genuinely wanting to see him grow his potential.
Ashton's pipe showed that the greatest, most heroic moment of Bor'Dor's life was casting Fire Bolt at that target, and getting to celebrate it with the rest of the Hells. It was feeling accepted for the first time in his life. Feeling respected. Feeling like he belonged, like he and his magic belonged and weren't some horrible, dangerous thing that they would fear him for or would have a temple come and cart him away for.
These people—who he somehow either followed across an ocean or luckily ran into—who he specifically stayed with because he intended to kill them for sabotaging the Ruby Vanguard's plans. For killing "his friends" in Marquet.
These people were the ones he finally felt accepted by. Not the Ruby Vanguard.
He gave Ashton the first piece of mental relief and relaxation they'd felt in years, maybe ever. He gave them jerky, and made them fruit leather, and caught a little fish and had Prism Enlarge it to make sure they could eat. Was he telling himself it was just to ingratiate himself to them, to get closer so the knife would be easier to twist? When did ingratiating himself become "I wanted you to like me"? Did he have to keep convincing himself it was all part of the plan, that he didn't really like them, that he didn't want to keep them alive but he had to to get his revenge, that he could let them die at any moment and this wasn't just him getting attached because how could he get attached to people he meant to kill?
Did Bor'Dor realize, in the moment that he decided to try killing them in that cave, that the Vanguard had only ever seen him as a weapon? That his "friends" who'd died in Marquet (he'd watched Ashton throw some of their bodies out of the Hole just days ago) wouldn't have sought revenge for his death the same way, because he was nothing more than a tool for one man's schemes? Did he realize he had more in common with Orym who'd lost all his loved ones to Ludinus and Otohan and the Vanguard—with Laudna and her myriad of terrifying, beautiful magical gifts and her desire to do good with them—than he'd ever had in common with anyone in the Vanguard?
Is that part of why he just tried to run?
It didn't have to be this way!
Bor'Dor healed most of the group right after fighting the Taker. He knew that his Vitriolic Sphere probably wouldn't kill all of them, that they had health potions and could recover. He just needed to get away. Get away so that they couldn't come after him, and he didn't have to see how he'd hurt the only people who'd welcomed him into their hearts in years, and he could tell himself that maybe they did die and he'd fulfilled his mission, and could tell himself too that maybe they didn't die and he hadn't actually killed his only real friends in the world.
I saw you! In Marquet! You murdered my friends!
Was he really still angry at the Hells for killing Ruby Vanguard members? Or was he trying desperately to fight back against how much they cared about him? How much they had genuinely reached out and taken him in? How much it was going to hurt him to hurt them? Was he trying to cling to his original purpose, so that he could ignore how much it hurt to kill the first people who'd seen his magic and said "you're amazing" and meant it? Who'd said "can I try something", "what else can you do", "it's nice to know I'm not alone, because you're in the same boat as me"?
And when he gave up... when he didn't try to fight back... when he begged for the end because there was no point anymore...
The Vanguard wasn't enough to stay alive for. And he'd just betrayed the only people who'd ever completely accepted him. There was no point anymore. No point in fighting. No point in living. He was done. He'd had enough.
Bor'Dor Dog'Son deserves his peace. I'm glad he got it.
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aeoris4lovers · 10 months
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the quiet tragedy of verin being the one who never quite made it out.
for most of their lives, essek was the one who was entrenched in expectations, in the politics of their den. while verin was stationed far from the heart of the dynasty, ostensibly free from the eyes of his elders, essek was sitting beside their mother in court and speaking before the queen. and it made sense, because essek had always been better at all of it — the posturing, the sweet-talking, the ladder-climbing. his brother the black sleep was still his brother the prodigy; his brother the heretic was still his brother the shadowhand.
but then, essek meets new people and they get through to him and change him and make him softer, make him better (and why them? what is it about them, that they could do what verin never could?) and he runs. he gives up the title and the status and the power and leaves it all (leaves verin) behind.
suddenly, verin is the lone newsoul of den thelyss, the one with all eyes on him, with the expectations meant for two brothers falling squarely on his shoulders and only his in the absence of their other target. he is still the youngest of his den, the one they all watch and wait to be disappointed by, but there is no one to share that burden with anymore and all at once it becomes painfully clear that distance never really was freedom.
essek has a family, then — not a den but a family, with love and trust and care and warmth and all the things essek once called verin childish for craving — and a welcoming home to go to with someone who loves him waiting there and a garden in the front yard, and verin is left still fighting demons under the banner of a god (of a family, of a home) he only half-believes in.
and maybe they see each other more often then. maybe bazzoxan is remote enough that it’s safe for essek to visit in disguise. maybe essek’s friends come too and are kind enough to offer a taste of what essek has now and verin can almost believe it’s his too. maybe essek doesn’t even fight it anymore when verin insists on hugging him. but how much can that really fix? how much can it really change?
an unloved man leaves no one behind when he finally makes a better life for himself, but essek was never an unloved man. not really.
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chandri · 1 year
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nellasbookplanet · 4 months
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Much as it would’ve been interesting to see Ashton carry both shards, I think that there could’ve been no harder wake up call for them than to try to absorb it, survive, and still be rejected. Had he died obviously he would’ve learned nothing because he would be busy being dead (and his ghost would probably dig deeper into a 'that’s typical nothing good ever happens to me' mentality). Had he lived and successfully absorbed the shard, he would’ve felt validated and correct in his decision, no matter how angry everyone was or how close he came to dying.
But surviving and failing? He can’t claim the universe is uniquely out to get him and revel in a justified anger and resentment, because he survived against impossible odds. But he also can’t feel like he was in the right. Lately he's been bouncing between 'I'm not owed anything and the gods hate me specifically' and 'this is my fate and birth right and what I'm owed', but this result supports neither of those extremes. The gods don’t hate him and aren’t uniquely out to get him. He isn’t special and chosen and meant to carry all the power that he wants. He's just a guy, and he fucked up. I feel like this is forcing him to see the role he himself has played in his own misery, and is setting him up to grow beyond the arrogance, entitlement and resentment that led him to try and take the shard to begin with and has given rise to his vocal dislike of the gods. Maybe it’s even setting him up for a Luxon arc, as that would let him embrace the chaos that has saved him instead of the past and blood ties he went looking for, and to work through his feelings regarding the gods without having to work with the main pantheon (that may be too much for his pride).
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sassy-cass-16 · 4 months
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all the absolutely unhinged instructions and Liam/Orym stress-commands while travis was moving the piece
vs travis taking the lead on laura's turn and just so gently telling her where she needs to move the thing with ZERO chetney input
the cast is so much better at communication than bell's hells lmaooo
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tangent101 · 8 months
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Laudna, Delilah, and Imogen...
I've noticed something of late. Do you remember when Laudna put down Bor'Dor, and the mourning veil covered Laudna's face once more? The dread heartbeat of Delilah was awakened and Laudna was so scared she'd reconnected to Delilah. She was petrified about this... and felt ashamed of how she'd "failed" her friends.
But the Veil hasn't returned. Marisha doesn't describe the mourning veil in her next incarnations of her Form of Dread. And I think there is a very important reason for this: Imogen. More specifically, Imogen admitted to Laudna that she loved her. And after Laudna admitted to Imogen what had happened with Bor'Dor, not only did Imogen defend Laudna's actions, but she continued to love her.
I honestly think that Marisha was planning on having Laudna backslide with the mourning veil and a greater connection to Delilah once more. But Laura derailed that train with four simple words: Can I kiss you? At that moment, she had Imogen admit that she loved a woman who thought herself unlovable. And that woman realized that she can feel love in return. She realized that she has fallen in love with Imogen and will break the world for her.
We're talking about a girl who flung herself and Imogen off of a tower to escape a demon... and then promptly threw herself over Imogen's unconscious body to protect her from the demon when it chased after them. She's willing to die to save Imogen. And I suspect she's also willing to live for Imogen's sake. (Because anyone can die for someone else. It takes real strength to choose to live for someone.)
So... yeah. Imogen managed to Laudna-block Delilah. And I'm sure a certain faded soul-fragment of a dread necromancer is gnashing her spiritual teeth because for one moment she had a way to regain control... and that purple-haired horrible person once again managed to spirit Laudna away. =^.^=
Addendum note: It's also curious that Laudna hasn't told any of the others about Delilah. She's admitted it to Ashton, Orym likely figured it out and/or overheard her tell Ashton... but she's not told FCG, Fearne, or Chetney. Just Imogen. It's almost as if she wasn't scared if the others were unhappy with what she did... just Imogen.
And when Imogen said "Bor'Dor deserved it" and not only didn't shun Laudna for possibly awakening Delilah again but was also understanding about Laudna wanting to use Delilah's power against Predathos and at the very end giving her uplifting words suggesting it might be their destiny to fight that power... that was what Laudna needed to hear. It very well may have put Laudna's fears to rest.
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ghostofwhitestone · 7 months
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Critical Role and Ambiguous Loss
So I’ve said before that Critical Role’s examination of grief is super important and really fascinating, but it’s a specific kind of grief that sets it apart, so I wanted to look at it in a long form meta.
I wanted to dive into Ambiguous Loss, or grief over a loved one or situation without meaningful closure, in Critical Role.
So, let’s start with Keyleth.
From the very start of her journey with Vox Machina, ambiguous loss is a very present force in her character. She starts in a position where her mother isn’t dead (she could be for all Keyleth knows, but there is no proof either way), but she is gone. There is a loss, but there is no certainty.
So her interactions with grief are going to look a lot different than some others, like the twins or Scanlan, and they don’t come up terribly frequently, but they still act on Keyleth through her ascent to becoming the Voice of the Tempest. She finds security eventually but there were still questions. There is, for a while, no resolution.
For all Keyleth feels and grieves, she is not quite granted closure.
And of course, that’s where Vox Machina’s story is ends as well. Yes, a raven came to visit every day, but still there is no body. No grave. No death and no life, but something in between that is so many things, but finished is not one of them.
In the Mighty Nein we see this theme portrayed in a lot of other ways, primarily through Nott and Caduceus.
For each of them it is again a matter of not knowing, and how grief looks different when you don’t know. Nott unsure of Luc and Yeza’s safety, and even beyond that if they’ll take her back after all that’s happened. And Caduceus waiting and waiting to hear what’s going on with his family, staying in one place in case they came around or until he heard word.
There’s even Yasha, whose lack of memory about Zuala made her grief more rooted in the ambiguous nature of it all. Even Caleb, whose loss is hardly uncertain, starts his campaign with the goal of changing this.
It’s a story of grief and its resolution, and how even happy endings can change you.
And now. Now Ashton says “how can you grieve something if you don’t know what you lost,” and we’re looking at a new form of grief. Grief not for what you did know but what you didn’t.
And my point with all of this is that this is a kind of grief that isn’t usually looked at, especially not to this degree, and yet it’s everywhere. It’s at the very core of so many of these stories.
It’s in every campaign, and it’s always something you can live through. Always something you can survive.
And we hear that with losing loved ones all the time, but seeing so many people finding resolution to ambiguity or living with it in a way that shows their life is not guided by that is just really beautiful to me.
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ludinusdaleth · 7 days
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absolutely out of my mind obsessed. OBSESSED. with liliana always saying "he" and, even if we know it's ludinus, never saying his name and obfuscating him with predathos, these two pillars of limitless power & incredible cruelty that chain her, stronger than her, in her own words. how he needs her. how he admires & values & even in some way adores her, and maybe more. how she's pulled ludinus back from the very edge. her trying to change him, and zerxus 1000 years ago trying to change asmodeus and jester trying to change artagan and caleb trying to change essek and the m9 trying to change lucien and opal trying to change lolth, and imogen, trying to change her own mother. this cycle of desperate belief in redemption that can succeed or fail, the coin that hasnt landed on a side yet. how that's freedom for some. how that's a whip, a martinet on the back of the reformer for others. the belief in set fate vs the vanguard belief in changing destiny. generation upon generation of hope & abuse that can so easily become one or the other or both at once for eon upon eon. how the gods who created these mortals who seek any glint of kindness desperately wish, in this moment, for redemption themselves. "to reach a hand down to somebody, they need to be beneath you". but the gods are in the sky. and their saviors are on a lonely planet & lonelier moon, locked together by a cycle of violence & desperation started by them so long ago.
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deramin2 · 5 months
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If it shocks you that a fairly young punk would use their body autonomy to do something dangerous and reckless defying multiple safety warnings because they felt powerful for the first time in their life and had a violent institutional enemy to fight, you really don't know punks very well. This is like the quintessential punk mentality.
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vethbrenatto · 4 months
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breaking all That down a little
honestly c3e78 was just a FASCINATING roleplay episode so i'm doing a little train of thought meta on different people's reactions to the events of c3e77:
most of the group is angry at ashton, obviously. but for different reasons. fcg & imogen seem to carry concern largely for ashton themself and fear his self-harming tendencies. both go in on him directly, but also seem to be the ones who are openly the kindest towards them after they reject the second shard.
conversely, laudna and chetney are mad at ashton for hurting fearne (and in laudna's case, feel specifically betrayed). they both feel his crime is the effect his actions have on others.
which is fascinating, when paired with fearne's reaction, because fearne also blames ashton, but just as heavily blames herself. others like chetney and laudna rage in her honor, but she's mad at herself for going along with it. for making the "wrong" choice. for letting her feelings for ashton cloud her judgment.
and circling back around, we get to what ashton is feeling. regret, sorrow, immediate attempts at amends. but there's something in their conversation with chetney that really got me: when they state that when chetney inevitably fucks up at some point in the future, they will stand by chetney and give support. that he will show grace in that situation.
to which chetney says, just words. which maybe. but it's so in line with what ashton wants- family, belonging, unconditional love. going all the way back to the nobodies, this is what ashton is about. i think he would show grace, and i think he has in situations when others in the party haven't. there's something hard to swallow about the reactions to ashton in this episode, not because they're wrong from the other members of the party, but because in ashton's rebuttal to chetney, it feels like what ashton needs is for someone to say, "you fucked up, but we still love you." which they sort of get around to by the end of the episode, but we're not quite there yet.
insane RP episode, 10/10
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12pt-times-new-roman · 7 months
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I fully forgot that I pre-ordered Exquisite Exandria until it arrived this morning, so you know what that means!
time for lore!
The Dawnfather is also the god of time. (pg. 77)
During celebrations, the "vow of Vasselheim" is recited: "we remember and thank the gods who saved us. We honor their magic and practice no other. We remember the hubris that nearly destroyed us. We will never forget again." Vasselheim's culture and/or governance (but not the entirety of Issylra itself) believes that arcane magic was the cause of the Calamity, and refuses to make the mistakes of its ancestors. (pg. 77)
There's a particular sentence that could allude to Gruumsh, the Ruiner having been the one to bring down Aeor: "he drove his spear clean through [Cael Morrow] and into the ground below, detonating a third of the continent in one gigantic strike." Using "clean through" and "detonate" here is reminiscent of Matt's description of the smooth borehole and mile-wide crater in the Genesis Ward. (pg. 102)
The Dwendalian Empire has declared that "divine magic and most religious worship are trickery and deceit." This is why they found the Kryn Dynasty's theocracy so threatening. (pg. 152)
The Cerberus Assembly is referred to as "a pillar of corruption at the heart of a totalitarian government." (pg. 153)
Essek Thelyss is canonically a member of the Mighty Nein. (pg. 154)
After Yasha brought her book of flowers to Zuala's grave, she started her own flower garden with Beau, and the first seeds she planted there were from the Blooming Grove. (pg. 190)
Athodan tried to use gravity magic to reverse the over-ripening of fruit. It failed, but the resulting concoction was used to taunt and celebrate him for months. (pg. 206)
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happycattail · 1 month
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The way the table physically reacted to Caleb's reply. It was such a powerful moment both in character and outside of character. The reward after a long day.
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